The Institute for Applied Autonomy

Terminal Air
Plymouth Arts Centre, 23 – 31 March 2007

Terminal Air is an interactive mapping website and installation to document the American CIA’s practice of 'extraordinary rendition' flights. The term extraordinary rendition describes the now common practice of using secret airplanes to transport suspected terrorists to secret ‘dark’ prisons in foreign countries, where they can be interrogated and tortured outside the reach of international human rights conventions. Since 2001, CIA-operated airplanes have been stopping in several European countries, including the United Kingdom, for service and refuelling during extraordinary rendition flights. Although officials in these countries have so far denied knowledge of this practice, a recent European Commission report suggests that there has been substantial cooperation between European leaders and their American counterparts. Thanks to a network of plane enthusiasts, many of these planes have been identified by their serial numbers and can be tracked as the move between airports.

In the installation, IAA present an imagined CIA travel office from which the programme is organised. On the wall, two video monitors display an animated map of the world showing the movements of the 30+ known CIA planes during that last 5 years. Periodically, the telephones ring and a voice message announces the arrival or departure of a known CIA plane as it lands or takes off from one of the many CIA friendly airports world-wide. Posters on the wall advertise the services of the various ‘front-companies’ that the CIA uses (eg. ‘Premiere Executive Transport’) and the locations that they provide travel to (Syria, Afghanistan, Cuba, etc.).

Commemorative Plaque
Venue TBA

'On March 9th, 1858 HMS Agamemnon and the USS Niagara sailed from Plymouth harbour to lay the transatlantic telegraph cable, the world’s first transcontinental communications network linking Great Britain and the United States. This marker is presented to the city of Plymouth by the Institute for Applied Autonomy on September 1, 2007, to commemorate the 149th anniversary of the first global communications network crash - which occurred 3 weeks after the cable's inauguration, the result of a misguided attempt at increasing transmission speed by electrician Edward Orange Wildman Whitehouse.'

The Institute for Applied Autonomy also proposes a historic marker commemorating the first ‘extraordinary rendition’ flight to land in UK territory, and honouring the ongoing ‘special relationship’ between the US and UK. Plymouth has been selected as the site for a historic marker because of its unique historical position symbolising linkages between our two countries. From the initial voyage of the Mayflower from Plymouth Harbour, to the imprisonment of American patriots in Plymouth Goal during the American War for Independence, to the loading of the transatlantic cable in Plymouth dockyards, Plymouth has been a key node in symbolic, historical, and physical linkages between the US and UK. As such, it is an ideal location to represent the current manifestation of the so-called ‘special relationship’ between the Blair and Bush administrations. Through this project, we hope also to express solidarity between US and UK dissident and resistance movements.

http://www.appliedautonomy.com/

Ludic Society
Judgement Day for 1st Life Game Figures
Drake Circus Shopping Centre, 23 & 24 March 2007

The Ludic Society present their Tagged City Play for Real Players in Real Cities, using a Plymouth Road Runner car for the Plymouth Play.

The Pit Stop: ‘Being Tagged! Tagging!’
Unique to the Plymouth city play is that although it’s a locative play with mobile electronic devices, the players are tagged and become the game-interfaces. The tagged person appears as a life game figure and plays in a real city. Players are provided with a tagging toolbox containing a variety of tag utensils: graffiti, spray stencils, stickers, RFID stickers and implant injection kits. To tag the city, real world objects are subjectively chosen for tagging. The tags are functional but useless (RFID-tags with zero data)! By putting this zero-tag on an object, the Real Players de-valuate real world things into virtual play-objects. If the Real Players find a tagged object with a value assigned to it, they will zap it. The goal of the play is to change the value of tags into the value Zero. To achieve that, Real Players are equipped with ‘Wunderbäumchen’ toy objects. These Wunderbäumchen are technical toys for finding and reading tags and/or emitting a target-oriented EMP (electro magnetic pulse). Tagging is passing a judgement!

A Satellite Map fed by Real Players: A Borgesian Psycho-Active Pata Play Map!
This map is a collectively en-played graphical machine. The display shows the score of each player depending on objects tagged and de-tagged. Depending on each player’s RFID-number, it generates a graphical element to display the routes between tagging actions over a pimped home-brew on-line satellite map. The non-player visitor sees an overview of all the sites of city tags. Each location of a tagging action is marked with a Wunderbäumchen sign, resembling the Wunderbäumchen’s spread throughout the city. The play interface integrates GIS systems such as Google Earth and Wikimapia. The look of the map as game score and display, for uploading subjective play data, forms the uncensored on-line map of ‘the Internet of things’! The stencil-style satellite game map unmasks the satellite truth. It shows the outdated images of GIS systems, unveils the rules of play of systems such as Wikimapia and Google Earth, the intentionally chosen constructions of certain geographical data companies. The images given to the public are more of a political decision, a purposeful set of rules - but not a game in the sense of a wilfully taken constraint. Nevertheless, a game interface appears as the adequate choice for these new maps of the world.

Drake Circus Shopping Centre: We sell Play - no Games!
The tags are used to judge certain locations of the city. When the game map and Plymouth car are presented at the Drake Circus Shopping Centre, then it is Judgement Day in Plymouth (on 23 and 24 March 2007). Also installed in the shopping centre is the play car - the legendary 1970s muscle car Plymouth Road runner. The difference to existing locative mapping games is that it is no Game, just Play, according to the Ludic Society slogan: ‘We sell Play – no Games!’. This means that there are no fixed rules or negotiable outcomes of the play, but a clearly defined goal - de-pricing the networked world of marked things, and a flexible tool-kit for the play of tagging the city. The outcome of a tag set on the play-map is open. The Real Player actions cumulate in a collectively constructed Borgesian psycho-active play-map (at 1:1 scale, as large as the territory, which it represents). Displayed is a 1:1 meta-game played in the Reality Engine over the city, blowing up the most tagged sites with the value Zero. The game-play of this Real Play focuses on things we don’t normally name and see as play objects. This absence, marked with RFID stickers, defines the players' personal game map developed in the course of the play in the city - instead of adding another boring data layer to reality (like most Google Earth/ map applications do).

http://www.ludic-society.net/tagged/

Mikro Orchestra Project
Performance
Plymouth Guildhall, 23 March 2007

Press START
Level 1 > Score 0
Our generation has been dealing with computers since childhood. We have witnessed an evolution of 8 bit computers into 32 bit ones. Computer technology has grown with us. We would play computer games in our free time.

Level 2 > Score 67
One of the factors in the creation of the Mikro Orchestra Project was irony aimed at the contemporary electronic scene, where musicians compete with technological progress - better and better hardware, more and more complex software. We decided to make a radical step and impose restrictions to create sound with use of the GameBoy console.

Level 3 > Score 174
From the very beginning of working on the Mikro Orchestra Project we have been trying to generate our own sound. Of course we deal with pastiche and appropriation, such as samples from games, but this is not our main aim. On the contrary, our aim is to create living sound, improvisation and game-play. Nostalgia connected with old games only gave us initial direction, and indicated the choice of medium for sound creation. Of course we are not orthodox. We are also active in other music projects exploring different fields of electronic music.

Level 4 > Score 251
We use elements from archives and current pop culture, that in relation to the peculiar choreography of our concerts in which we do not move much at all, creates a kind of anti-performance that makes comment on quasi avant-garde attempts to place electronic music on the stage in contrast to the spectacular concerts of pop stars. We are also inspired by the aesthetic of 8 bit computers and old school games. The kitsch setting of our performances is purposeful, however it would be a mistake to perceive it in terms of any ideology.

Level 5 > Score 287
From a musician's point of view the GameBoy device is a simple analogue synthesiser, with a raw and at the same time interesting retro sound. While connected with suitable software it can be used as a drum machine or groovebox. The console's interface is rather limited with only a few buttons, so the sound structures must be simple too. This is also the reason
for having 6 players - the more players make the sound environment more complex. In the context of music, the untypical interface of the GameBoy console helps us achieve intriguing results.

Level 6 > Your score 367
The Mikro Orchestra Project is an experimental audio-visual project, based on the use of GameBoy console as a music instrument. The main assumption of the project's authors is to create a new sound space based on the tones generated live from the console during the performance. Since 2005 we have been using our own vj-ing software SQJ (http://www.sqjvj.com/). The group has been active since 2001. Their first performance took place at WRO 01 International Media Art Biennale in Wroclaw, Poland, on 5th May, 2001.

GAME OVER

The Mikro Orchestra Project has been inspired by an experimental use of the GameBoy console as a musical instrument. The console, an 8-bit handheld computer with particularly low level technical parameters, provides a creative challenge for generating a new type of sound and visual space in real time, using software specifically developed for this purpose (Nanoloop). The Mikro Orchestra Project does not work as an orthodox group and utilises the latest technologies along with retrograde ones used by musicians associated with the MICROMUSIC society whose slogan is ‘lowtech music for hightech people’.

http://www.mikroorchestra.com/

c6
Dotmaster project pre-launch: Mobility in the art market
Cube3 gallery, Portland Square, University of Plymouth, 23 March 2007

The Dotmasters present a series of curated popular fine art masterpieces for Plymouth.

With stencil art becoming hot property, it is commanding higher and higher prices, collected for investment and sold for increasing profit. With the street forgotten, the Dotmasters decided in true C6 style to generate an alternative urban structured art market. Stencils in the Dotmaster series will be accompanied by a unique sticker. This sticker will be associated with a certain location and work. When MMS'ed to the number shown each participant will be returned an id and details on how to purchase a print of it, or commission a duplicate work at a location of their choice. Print values will be dependant on participation; early viewers will get cheaper prices. The project hopes to set up geographical street markets for Dot masters works, for instance prices of works in Shoreditch may be of higher value than those in Plymouth. These market prices and locations will be updated automatically at our C6 Google map gallery, allowing you to browse places of high and low cost.

The purchase of prints will be restricted to one of each design purchased through an individuals phone and number accompanied of course by the relevant MMS'ed pictogram. Email address and subsequent payment accounts will be cross-referenced to ensure that the Dotmasters series remains in the realm of street art enthusiasts and not in the hands of dealers. Popular locations will become expensive encouraging those taking part to explore new areas and beat the market. First come, first served, and cheap!

This system is automated and will update in real-time, as you buy the market reacts and updates maps and prices for that location. Replies to sent pictograms will direct users to a web page where postal details and payment can be made. Costs will include postage and packing. MMS will be charged at the usual rates of your contract provider. Payments can be made via PayPal, cheque or postal order. Print sizes will represent actual stencil sizes.

It isn't often that the public can commission a public work, but using the Dotmasters system you can. Simply enter the postcode of the address you wish to be adorned with a particular work and the Dotmasters will scout it out. Your chosen location will be added to the map pending objections from your wider local community. Prices vary depending on this survey, distances travelled, and risk involved.

Mobility in the art market will be launched in April 2007.

http://c6.org/thedotmasters/mobile_phone/

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